


Diverse Realities

by Ntjnke



Category: The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Genre: Don't read this if RPF squicks you, M/M, RPF is still FICTION, This is RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:22:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ntjnke/pseuds/Ntjnke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Midnight prose about both of Stephen's lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diverse Realities

**Disclaimer:** All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

 

 

 

 

_Diverse Realities  
_

 

Evelyn McGee was tall and statuesque, the type of woman who knew what she looked like and wasn't afraid to use that to her advantage. What caught Stephen's eye, however, wasn't her looks, but her smile. She was standing across the room from him, holding a cocktail glass, and when his eye caught hers, she raised her glass to him and smiled. No games. No coyness. Just a welcoming glance that he found himself besotted with.

It took him two weeks to get around to asking her out, nearly three months to consider himself part of her life. But back then things were complicated. She was in New York. He was in Chicago. He thought that he wanted to serious drama and she wanted television work. Sitcoms and movies, if she could swing it.

But they made it work. He called her between shows, and she, rather charmingly, wrote him a letter every week that detailed every adventure she'd had in New York since the last time she'd "talked" to him.

Stephen Colbert went from a glance across the room to in love with Evie McGee within the course of a year. By the beginning of the second year, he had brought her home for Christmas, introduced her to his mom, and wondered what her name would sound like with his attached to the end.

Things with Evie had been simple. They fit. There was joy and happiness, and, fittingly, a place between the two of them they both called home.

 

 

 

*****

The first time Stephen had seen Jon Stewart had also been across a busy room. Well, it wasn't so much a room as a parking garage, and it hadn't been so much busy as it was seven in the morning and people were rushing from the garage toward the streets so they could get to their jobs.

Stephen hadn't been the type to drive back then, or even get a ride. He'd only driven in that morning because he was supposed to pick Evie up from a party in the city. He was her designated driver, so he'd coaxed their beaten up Corolla into the city for the occasion.

Jon had been standing across the way. Stephen recognized him from his interview and from the few times he'd been to the studio since it had been announced he was going to replace Kilbourne. Jon was standing in the shadow of a car, a Dodge Ram, and was nursing the flame at the tip of his cigarette.

Stephen immediately could tell he was the self-conscious sort. When Jon realized he was being watched, he raised his head a bit, lowered his cigarette, and flicked off the ash towards his left foot, as if lowering the cigarette would convince a stranger that he wasn't really smoking it.

Back then, Stephen hadn't known him well enough to want to cause trouble. He'd simply raised his hand and smiled, moving from the garage into the studio. Jon Stewart, back then, had been his boss, a newcomer to the Comedy Central, and really not much of Stephen's style. Stephen, if had the choice, preferred to be with people who challenged him with new ideas. People who presented to him something he had never seen or wouldn't get to see without their help. His time, his free time, was precious enough. He had 3 kids at home, and was putting things together on an actor's salary. He'd moved passed smoking in garages nearly 20 years ago.

With Jon, it had taken more like 3 months for Stephen to mentally tape Jon into his social landscape. They didn't share calls or letters. There was never talk before or after work, but Jon did have a sort of predictability that Stephen found himself liking. Jon always came in at 9:30. He had a coffee and a bagel for breakfast and always packed his own lunch. Surprisingly, Jon was the sort of person who had to say "Thank you" every time someone passed something his way or helped him solve a problem. He was moody to a fault, but never impolite.

For Stephen, Jon Stewart had his own little box that glued him firmly to the studio floor in New York. And back then, he really had no reason to think that would really ever change.

 

 

 

*****

One thing Stephen adored about Evie was how direct she could be. She had a diplomat's charm and a general's sensibility. She knew what she wanted and she wasn't afraid to get it. When they had started to date, Stephen had once joked that if god had put her brain in his body, they would have conquered Normandy by now.  
Evie had just smiled and continued to eat her appetizer. It was one of was one of the things he loved about her. She let him make jokes constantly, but didn't feel compelled to laugh at something she didn't really think was funny.

Evie didn't like it when he worked random hours. She didn't care if he worked _long_ hours, so long as he had a schedule that she and the kids could work around. So Stephen got up by six, made breakfast for the kids, and got their things together for school. That gave Evie time to pack their lunches and load everything into the car to get them to school. Stephen was up by six and his family was out the door by eight. If he had had the foresight to pack _his_ things the night before, he was usually at the train station by 8:30 and in the studio by 9:30. He would work, tape, and be on the train home by 6. By the time he walked through the door, Evie had dinner on the table and the kids were done with their homework. He had to do the dishes. She made sure they all took their showers and got into bed. If they weren't both exhausted, there was time for just the two of them, and then light's out. Stephen admitted it. He was almost childlike in his need to be in bed by 11.

When The Daily Show started asking him to do correspondent pieces, to travel all over the country interviewing random people for the sake of comedy, Evie had balked. She'd said that their family had little enough time together as it was. It wasn't as if Stephen were meeting luminaries or people that would help him further his career. The Daily Show, she said, was supposed to be a stepping stone until the project with Amy and Paul, trained comedians, panned out. And she was right. That was exactly what he'd said.

They fought over it. Repeatedly. Evie fought by ignoring him, and never looking him in the eye and wearing flannel pajamas to sleep. She would put her hair up with scrunchies and say "Please" and "Thank you" in the morning over the kids lunchboxes, but never made sure that his favorite shirt was washed for Monday morning.

It took nearly 2 months of off site correspondent work for the two of them to work out a system that worked for the two of them. In the end, Evie drove him to the airport and the kids learned that they could expect one present each whenever daddy went on a trip. Stephen would kiss Evie on the hair as he slung his backpack over his shoulder. They called every night before she went to bed.

They made it work.

 

 

 

*****

Jon never pushed. He never asked for more than a person wanted to give, and he never said that their best wasn't good enough. He just drew out a safe space to try things and provided, albeit meager, resources for his staff to fund their projects. He said that what he wished his bosses had provided when he was younger. He believed in paying it forward.

Stephen's first fight with Jon had been, eerily enough, about Stephen's _lack_ of commitment. Stephen had been pulled in too many directions, with too many different promises, between two different shows and there were only 24 hours a day. Even in show business. He showed up to both jobs tired, and he knew, deep down inside, that he could do better.

Jon had invited him into his office and asked how he was doing. If he needed help. If there was a way that The Daily Show could at least make things easier for him.

Stephen had replied that he was doing fine, that he didn't need any help. He hadn't meant to be terse. He hadn't meant to be short to Jon, and really, if he had gotten more sleep, he doubted that it would have come out sounding the way it did at all.

But Jon, for once, took the opening it gave him.

When Jon fought, he was passionate. When he was angry, there was nothing else in the world. There were no phone calls to answer, and anyone who knocked on the door could damn well wait the ten minutes he needed to get what he wanted off his chest.

He, he'd said, had made every possible compromise to keep Stephen at The Daily Show. He'd taken one of his best actors off the air to let him explore an independent project, and the least Stephen could do was try to accept the fact that he needed help.

That was the thing about Jon. He never got angry at what you did. Or the choice you made. He got angry about the fact that you were hurting yourself. That you made him watch.

When he was done ranting, Jon had sat down behind his desk and rested his head on his folded hands. Stephen watched, his coffee cup cold in his hand, but at least it gave him the comfort of something to hold on to. He wasn't prepared for the sight of someone so even keel letting it all go like that.

That was the day Jon told him that he needed to split his schedule between the two shows more cleanly. A full day on Strangers with Candy, and a full day at The Daily Show. He could take it or leave it, but Jon wasn't going to let him fuck up both shows because he was trying to be too many things to too many people.

Stephen had nodded and went back to his office to rework his schedule. It occurred to him that open anger could be better than quiet.

 

 

 

*****

Where Stephen was joy, Evie was bedrock. That wasn't to say she was boring. She wasn't. She was a better dancer than him. She had more friends and knew how to turn the ear, and eye, of people he was too afraid to approach.

But she thought more rationally about things. She had plans and stuck to them, and when she was faced with something overwhelming, she sat down at the kitchen table and figured out what she needed to do to make things _work_. Stephen had spent many nights of his life sitting at their kitchen table with her, his life outlined on school notebook paper, watching Evie prioritize his life. He loved her for it. It was one of the reasons he knew she was the right woman for him.

When Stephen's mother was sick, back in 2002, Evie had been stalwart. She'd gotten the call from Stephen's brother, contacted his family for more details, and before she'd even called Stephen, she had the plane tickets arranged and plans for people to watch children while they flew down. She even had a friend who was willing to fly down with the kids if there was a need for it.

There was a list, in her little brown book, of everything that needed to be done to make it work. And, in return, Stephen got the safe place he needed to sit at his mother's bed and cry. His mother had looked from her bed to Stephen, and then taken Evie's hand, smiling, saying that she liked what she saw. Holding the hands of the women he loved, Stephen realized that he liked what he saw, too. Everyday.

 

 

 

*****

Jon did not handle stress. Handling stress implied that he found a way around it, that he managed to circumvent it to somehow end up at the goal he wanted.

Jon, instead, absorbed stress. It's caffeine to him, and when he wakes up he takes a big gulp of it. When he gets on the subway, he does so with a pot of it bubbling in his gut.

Jon arranges his entire world in scraps of paper he can hold onto. He grabs flitting thoughts as they come to him, and tries his best to pin them down with a pen and paper. Sticky notes were designed for him, and everywhere he goes he leaves a trail of them, telling people what to do, what he needs, what his ideas are. On the board behind his desk, he passes as an organized person by having a tiny version of the studio, laid out in colored index cards. And, as each idea becomes reality, he takes it down and throws it into a box he's saved for just that reason. A rational person would depend on the transcripts of the show to know where they've been and what they've done. Not Jon. He remembers his accomplishments as bits of color and the weight of the pen he was using when he wrote them down.

When Jon's grandparents had been ill, his mother Marian had called him to say he needed to be in New Jersey. That he needed to go home until it was all over with, and that, for once, he needed to stop thinking about his career and start thinking about the things that really mattered. Home. Family.

Stephen had been there when he'd taken that call, and he'd seen how the man in Jon had warred with the boy every man becomes when he hears his mother's voice.

Jon didn't have a kitchen table. He had his office, a Mac, and extra-large Post-It notes that he used to detail everything that he needed to have done. Every job that he needed to delegate, and every phone number he needed to put into his phone for the next week and a half of stress.

When he had time before he had to go home, Stephen had stopped by Jon's office, sat a cup of coffee on his desk, and rubbed Jon's shoulders. He carefully pulled a clenched hand away from the hair it was ripping out of the other man's skull and let him know it would be alright.

Jon smiled. Stephen would smile, and then go home. On the 6pm train to Jersey.

 

 

 

*****

Making love to Evie was slow. Indulgent. She always smelled so good, and she had this habit of eventually landing on top, so, at the best of times, all he had to do was hold on tight to her hips and enjoy the fact that he had had the stupid luck to find her.

She kissed thoroughly, like she knew every sensitive spot on his lips, like she knew where she wanted every kiss to begin, grow into, and end. Her tongue usually started on his bottom lip, and when he was fighting the need to push roughly up into her, she would chuckle and wrap her fingers in his hair, laughing outright as their familiar kiss became fiery and private.

Evie liked to take her time, and Stephen liked to please her. They never rushed their time together. They planned for when the kids would be out of the house or asleep. He would start at her legs and work his way up to her breasts and, always, every touch would be reverent.

When she did end up on the bottom, Evie wrapped her legs around him and let him know, out loud with fervent whispers, that Stephen was doing everything right, that she loved him, that she couldn't want anything else. And Stephen would smile and kiss her and follow her over into the abyss.

They never bothered to shower after. Stephen would fall to the side and wrap an arm around her, and together they would turn in for the night, their comforter wrapped around the two of them. Evie somehow always managed to remember to check the alarm for the next morning.

Stephen would kiss the back of her neck before he dozed off.

 

 

 

*****

In bed, Jon was not at all what Stephen had expected. With his brusqueness and reticence about trusting the outside world, Stephen had sometimes thought that Jon would be quiet. Shy. That things would go slowly between them, and maybe, when they were finally together, that there would be a slow special something that was just the two of them.

At other times, he thought about how driven Jon was, how much energy he had hidden in his worn frame, and thought that he would be playful, like a puppy, almost. And that thought had caused him enough trouble. The first time he realized his was going to have sex with Jon Stewart, Stephen had obsessed about the fact that he was a full 4 inches shorter than Evie. He'd wondered if he could transpose the heterosexual arithmetic over to Jon's smaller body. If Jon would appreciate his efforts.

But Stephen had been wrong. Gloriously wrong about everything, and every time they were together, he was thankful for that. Jon was never quiet or slow when he made love. He brought vibrancy to the act. It was worshipful, reverent, but as silent or loud as it needed to be for the two of them to enjoy it. For Jon, sex was about experiencing Stephen. About touching his skin, about moving his hand from the small of Stephen's back up to the bend of his neck, and placing tiny kisses anywhere that his hands had had the audacity to get to first.

Jon offered up his body like it was all he had to give, and when Stephen moved in him the sounds he made were pure joy that he was with Stephen. They were cries of a delight he didn't know how to share any other way.

Jon was fastidious about the afterwards. He'd come out of the bathroom with warm, wet towels and giggle and talk as wiped down Stephen's body and his own. He'd swipe lovingly at Stephen's face, and press a kiss to Stephen's nose as he rambled distractedly about what tomorrow would bring and what he was and wasn't prepared for. The warm towels always were placed on the nightstand, on a little plastic tray Jon told people was for his glasses, or, if they knew him better than that, his phone.

He slept with his right arm over Stephen's chest, his right leg over Stephen's leg, and Stephen knew he was asleep when his mumbling slowed into a soft snore.

Jon slept better when Stephen ran a hand through is hair afterwards.

Stephen was the one responsible for waking the two of them up.

 

 

 

 

*****

Years ago when Stephen had stood on the stage of his first gig, he hadn't known what he was going to accomplish. He'd had his dreams, but, in comparison to what he had actually achieved, they had been small and ill-suited to what he was actually good at.

He was lucky. So lucky. Everyday he did what he loved, he had respect for the craft he had decided to pursue, and his family, for the most part, was well and happy. He had the resources to see them whenever he wanted to.

Burying Evie had been hard. Her entire family was from the same town as his family, and the church had been full of crying, people dressed in black holding handkerchiefs to their face while the priest said the last rites. Stephen had stood at her grave, and Peter had held his father upright, bearing his weight, while the other mourners had moved past the grave site to murmur their final condolences.

Stephen had stayed at the open grave for hours, moving only when the groundskeeper said that the crew needed to come in and finish their work before nightfall. He'd gone afterwards and lost himself in making sure that the kids were fine, that their families were fine, and, at the end of the ordeal, he'd tucked himself into the bed he'd shared with his wife and started to cry when he realized that no one had set the alarm for the morning.

Jon had been harder. He'd wanted a private funeral, but his final wishes were buried under the needs of his business and his contacts. Stephen had ended up standing side by side with people he didn't really know, and he felt the final words weren't at all what Jon would have wanted.

People thought he was there because he was a good friend. They expected him to be there because of their careers, and really, since none of the laws had changed in their lifetimes, there was really nothing more he could say about what he was in Jon's life. It was easier for Stephen to leave that gravesite. He never saw them throw dirt on the casket.

He did go home to their apartment and touch things. The children had called. John had flown in to make sure he was okay, but Maddie was on the other side of the world with a project, and Peter had a sick baby. They said they were going to fly in to spend time with him later in the month. Stephen knew they meant it, so the time alone didn't bother him.

But this did. Sitting on the comforter of their bed, touching things that were now his alone. The pillowcases that Jon kept because Tracey made them with Maggie in the 2nd grade. The old TV that Stephen used to have in the den of his house with Evie, the rabbit ears no longer functional, and the sound far too dim for him to hear at nights.

Tired now, alone, Stephen held the pictures of the two loves of his life and wondered at the odd mix of grief and blessing he felt. That he could have been blessed with so much love in his life, and yet so fucking unfortunate to have lost both of them. To have to say goodbye.

Evie's picture went on the fireplace mantle, back where it had been since he had moved. Her smile warmed him as he got ready for bed, his flannel pajamas replacing the starched awfulness of the gray funeral suit.

Jon's photo he put on the nightstand, right behind the plastic dish that he supposed he needed to find another use for now.

Reaching across the pillows, Stephen set the alarm for 10am the next morning. He could sleep in.


End file.
